There is an old joke about Yemen, told to any traveler who sticks around long enough: “Noah came back to Earth recently, curious to see how it had evolved since his time. In a private jet on loan from God, he first flew over France and said, ‘My! Look at France! How it has changed! What exciting new architecture! What amazing innovation!’ He then flew over Germany. ‘Incredible! I would hardly recognize it! So much new technology! Such thrilling industry!’ And then he headed to southern Arabia. ‘Ah, Yemen,’ he said fondly. ‘I’d know it anywhere. Hasn’t changed a bit.’ ”

In many ways, it hasn’t. I wasn’t in Yemen back in the first millennium BC, when Noah’s son Shem is said to have founded the capital city of Sana’a. But in many parts of the country, people are living exactly as their ancestors did thousands of years ago. They herd goats and cows; they grow wheat, pomegranates and grapes; they travel long distances to fetch water. They live in simple, square, mud-brick homes. They paint themselves with an ink called nagsh for weddings. They pray.

While many Americans might assume Yemen to be nothing more than miles of barren sand, the country’s terrain is incredibly diverse — and almost unchanged by the passage of time. On a flyover today, Noah would find that erosion has run light fingers over the jagged mountains of the central highlands. Long stretches of empty beaches in the south are touched by the same tides that have washed them since the Flood. The green terraces carved into the Haraz mountains in the west or the verdant hills around Ibb and Ta’iz to the south may have been there since the dawn of agriculture, cultivated by generation after generation of Yemeni farmers. The dense vegetation of the valleys suggests the whim of a playful god who, weary of the relentless beige of Arabian rock and sand, tossed a thick emerald quilt over Yemen’s countryside, creating a fertile layer that has fed the Yemeni people for generations.

I was fortunate enough to spend four years in this extraordinary country, including a year as editor of a Yemeni newspaper. In the old city of Sana’a, I lived in a four-story house that looked as if it were made out of gingerbread, with gypsum plaster frosting around the edges and jewel-like stained glass windows. Every time I left my home I was greeted by cries of “Welcome to Yemen!” and “I love you!” My neighbors often invited me over for tea or a meal — even before they knew my name. People with hardly enough money to feed their families presented me with lavish gifts of Yemeni daggers called jambiyas and silver jewelry designed by Yemeni Jews. Never have I been treated as warmly and generously by strangers as I was in Yemen.

Yet this is not the impression of the country one gets from reading the news. Yemen has made headlines for all the wrong reasons, painted broadly as a backwater of terror, home to anti-American preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, and the place where a series of bombs were mailed to the United States.

It pains me to see the western media paint such a monochromatic portrait of such a colorful country. Yes, Yemen has more than its fair share of violent radicals, but the majority of the country’s 23 million people would probably invite you home to lunch minutes after meeting you.

Still, I can’t ignore the fact that the security situation in Yemen has been slowly deteriorating. During my first year, in 2006, I felt completely safe as I walked the streets of Sana’a and traveled the country. But I was jolted into awareness of Yemen’s dangers when a group of Spanish tourists were killed in a suicide attack at a popular tourist site a year later.

Some of the things that make the country so appealing — its isolation from the modern world and conservative traditions — also make it difficult to police and manage. Yemen’s weak central government has little control over remote tribal areas, where terrorists and their training camps often find refuge from the law. About 70% of the country’s population is scattered in rural areas, with little access to communications and government services.

The island of Soqotra, located 220 miles off Yemen’s eastern coast, is one example of how remote many parts of the country are. With few roads and fewer electric lights, Soqotra has seen little of modern life. Many Soqotri people still live in caves, where they boil tea over fires in a corner to serve with goat milk still warm from their animals. Their dining rooms are thin woven mats spread outside, where they eat fish stew with chewy flatbread under salty night skies. There are people on Soqotra who have no idea what happened on 9/11. There are no radio stations, and almost no one can read. Everything they know they have heard from neighbors, imams or the occasional foreign aid worker.

Many of Yemen’s mainland villages feel just as remote. These villages get their news from state-controlled television or from the mosque. Only the elite would pick up a newspaper or read a book. One Yemeni woman was quoted in a local magazine as saying that she thought Saudi Arabia was a brand of soap.

All of this makes Yemen a difficult country to govern, and an attractive hideout for those evading the law. In my last few years there, attacks on foreigners have escalated, targeting Americans, Britons, Germans, Koreans and others. In May, my own life in Yemen came to an abrupt end when my fiancé was targeted by a suicide bomber (he was thankfully unhurt) and our baby daughter and I were evacuated. It was a devastating end to a happy time in a country I adore. And while I know that we cannot at the moment return there, as I read the latest news I can’t help but say aloud, “but Yemen is so much more than this.”

Jennifer F. Steil is the author of “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky” (Broadway Books), a memoir about living in Yemen, out now.